Just bought a treadmill...

[Cienja]

Hiya. I'm 235lb male, 38 years old. I need to lower my BP and my cholesterol...bad! So, I purchased a lower end treadmill and started using it today. I need to watch my calories and want to know if any of you have a suggestion of a web site that is close to correct when figuring out how many calories I burned, etc.

Any help is appreciated!

 

[jiggahertz]

fitday has activity calculators, but I would take them with as a rough estimate. You'll be better off tracking your caloric intake and changes in body weight than trying to guess at how many calories you're burning while exercising.

 

[techs]

Here's a good one. You put in your weight and the distance and it gives you the calories.
Calorie Counter

 

[spacejamz]

does the treadmill that you bought have any displays for anything? IMO, charts won't do that good because your level of exertion changes during your workout...if your level of exertion changes, then the amount of calories you burn per hour/mile/whatever change as well.

If calorie counting is important to you (and you cannot exchange your treadmill for one that calculates calories burned), then get a heart rate monitor that does it...

 

[spacejamz]

Originally posted by: techs
Here's a good one. You put in your weight and the distance and it gives you the calories.
Calorie Counter

for my last 4.2M run (finished in 45 minutes), I get the following:

Polar heart rate monitor - 615 Calories
Nike+ kit - 586 Calories
Tread Mill Display - 603 calories (input my age/weight before run)

That site - 566 Calories

 

[techs]

Originally posted by: spacejamz

Originally posted by: techs
Here's a good one. You put in your weight and the distance and it gives you the calories.
Calorie Counter

for my last 4.2M run (finished in 45 minutes), I get the following:

Polar heart rate monitor - 615 Calories
Nike+ kit - 586 Calories
Tread Mill Display - 603 calories (input my age/weight before run)

That site - 566 Calories

Ok, first off the ones that are giving you calories without taking into account your weight are definitely off. Also, the speed you run affects calories burned, which the link I gave you doesn't take into account either.
So the Tread Mill disply may or may not take the speed into account, or it may. And that might be the difference between 603 and 566.
I am not sure how the Nike+ kit and Polar heart monitor work.
However, just on the surface the differences between everything but the Polar heart monitor are relatively minor..
I'd pick the middle one (Tread Mill display) because it could be the only one that actually takes into account speed, distance and your weight and go by that. If you picked it the most you could be off, up or down is 17 up or 20 down. That number is insignificant.
Even if you add the polar monitor your difference is at most 29 up and 20 down. Once again insignificant.

 

[edcarman]

Originally posted by: spacejamz

Originally posted by: techs
Here's a good one. You put in your weight and the distance and it gives you the calories.
Calorie Counter

for my last 4.2M run (finished in 45 minutes), I get the following:

Polar heart rate monitor - 615 Calories
Nike+ kit - 586 Calories
Tread Mill Display - 603 calories (input my age/weight before run)

That site - 566 Calories

The Nike+, treadmill and site all measure mechanical energy usage and then use correlations based on age, weight etc. to predict your bodies calorie expenditure. The Polar uses a correlation between you heart rate, age, weight etc. to predict your calorie expenditure.
It's somewhat analogous to measuring your car engine's power consumption at the rear wheels (Nike etc.) and then compensating for drivetrain efficiency by taking a guess based on car type vs. measuring your engine RPM and comparing it to a typical torque/power curve for your car type (Polar).

On basic models Polar calculates expenditure based on gender, age and weight (OwnCal) and also includes VO2max and HRmax on the more advanced models (OwnCalS).

Scientific development and evaluation of the Polar OwnCal/OwnCalS

The above article outlines validation studies that compare the Polar predictions with results from gas analysers. The accuracy for men (it's more accurate if you're a woman) is around 1.6 kcal/min for less fit to moderately fit individuals using OwnCal and around 1.4 kcal/min for fit individuals using OwnCalS.

What does this mean for the different energy measures?

The accuracy over 45min translates to around +-63 kcal to +-72 kcal.
All of the above readings lie within this band around the Polar, so the others are all probably reasonably good estimates and you can draw no real conclusions about their accuracy relative to each other.